The Talk
by Horsegirl4goldie
Summary: Kurt Wylde's apprentice has always come to him when she had a problem. But this time, her problem may be more than Kurt can handle...


**Author's Note: Well, this is my first story ever published, so feedback would be greatly appreciated. I don't really remember where this idea came to me, but what shocked me so much was that I sat down and wrote it all in one night. I finished it, sat back, and realized... I HAD ONLY WRITTEN FOUR PAGES. O.O You see, I am a true novelist at heart, so the idea of writing a one-shot was absolutely... shocking. So here we go, and I hope you enjoy this little Kurt-and-Me study. ^.^**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Kurt Wylde or any of the Acceleracers characters. **

Kurt Wylde squinted at the drive train. That did _not_ look right. Everything looked… lopsided. Like it had shifted all to the left. His expert blue eyes scanned every little bolt and connector. Did he have some work to do. He rolled up the sleeves on his street jacket and reached for a wrench and a rag. He wasn't surprised. When you were throwing a car around at 300mph, things were liable to get a little mixed up. Mixed up as in: take all the car parts and throw them in a high-speed blender for two hours. He got started putting everything back where it belonged. He had been working oh, maybe fifteen minutes, when he saw someone striding toward him out of the corner of his eye. He glanced up, then glanced down again. It was just Amy. You see, a little while ago, the two teams had been well into the whole racing realms routine. They had managed not to kill each other when they were intermixed, maybe even worked out their differences a little, and were actually winning a few realms. And then Dr. Tezla had said, 'Surprise! Happy Birthday! I brought you someone to race with you!' And there, standing in the middle of the room, were three very confused-looking teenage girls. Tezla had beamed and went on to tell them about each one's potential, and how well they were going to race. Of course, not one of the girls really knew how to drive, but they had _amazing_ potential. And, of course, no one could argue with him, because he had picked Vert out of the blue back during the World Race and look how good he had turned out to be. Therefore, he was going to assign mentors for each of the girls to help them build their cars, teach them how to drive, and then how to race. After staring at the kids for a few seconds, the Metal Maniacs broke out into hysterical laughter. The Teku didn't laugh, they were much too composed for that, but they did bounce eyebrows and smirk incredulously at one another. Markie had laughed the hardest of his teammates. And once he was done laughing, he proceeded to try to fuck the one named Melanie. Kurt's brother had moved fast; before anybody could realize what was happening Markie already had her on the floor. And that was when Markie had met his match. Before anyone else did anything, the oldest girl in the group had leapt on him and attempted to slash his throat out. Markie had actually _yelped_ in surprise as this clawing demon had leapt on his back and buried her teeth in the back of his neck. He quickly forgot about Melanie and tried to throw the kid off, and succeeded. She hit the floor, jumped back up, dragged Melanie to her feet, dragged the other girl behind her, and proceeded to glare daggers at everyone in the room. It was then that Kurt had decided that she was his. Anyone with guts enough to take Markie on had to have enough guts to race. Also, she hadn't tried to rip Markie's intestines out of his body because she was a hotheaded little bitch. She had jumped him because she was _protecting_ her friends. And Kurt couldn't decide if it was the cutest little thing in the whole world or if he was just being sentimental, her standing there with her hands planted on her hips and napalm fire blazing in her hazel eyes, just daring the whole room full of big, strong men to try to lay hands on her friends again, and we'll just see what happens. Granted, she wasn't that little. She looked like she was nineteen or twenty or something, and acted like it too, but Tezla had said that they were all fifteen. She had broad shoulders and was stocky; Kurt could see the muscles in her arms that she later told him came from throwing around 50-pound bags of horse feed. So later when Tezla was handing the girls out he went and claimed her. Melanie was with Markie, because Markie wouldn't have it any other way, Amy was with Kurt, and Victoria was with Vert. Tezla had been satisfied with that arrangement, saying that it let the girls learn diverse driving styles. In other words, instead of three little Tekus or three little Maniacs he would have a little Teku, a little Maniac, and goodness knows what Amy would turn out to be. Probably her own deal. It turned out that Kurt had made not only a good choice, but also the best choice. Amy was the only one of her friends that had had much experience driving. Amy had her permit and had driven at least forty hours, Melanie had her permit and had driven no more than ten, and Victoria didn't even have a permit. Kurt had smirked at Markie and Vert, with the silent 'I don't have to spend as much time teaching her how to drive when I should be teaching her how to race, unlike _you_' look on his face. Markie had been too busy oogling Melanie to pay much attention, and Vert was to busy feeling protective. And it turned out that the mentors and mentored actually got along very well. It became common knowledge in the Acceledrome that Kurt had a soft spot for his young apprentice. If anybody wanted to chew her ass off, they had to either face Kurt's fiery wrath once he found out or chew his off first, and nobody wanted to do that. But it was not a romantic relationship, unlike the others. Each pair's personality fit together very well. Everyone politely ignored the many squeals and groans coming from Markie's room late at night. But believe it or not, it actually calmed Markie down. Kurt had initially thought that his bro would go horny-crazy all the time and be trying feel up the kid in front of everybody, but that didn't happen. Markie was actually more rational and didn't scream at Kurt as much, and even started to be nice to him again. And he and Melanie were inseparable. Victoria truly brought out the kid in Vert again. Vert had spent so much time trying to force himself to grow up after the World Race, and then Victoria just demolished all that work and took him right back to square one. And he was loving it. They were constantly pulling pranks, messing up different driver's hair gel (which was an atrocity), tampering with the music soundtracks in the cars (Taro turned his car on to "Walking on Sunshine" one day and had to have therapy from Karma), and causing general chaos with helpless giggles. They were so cute together, too. They would sit and hold hands, or shyly peck each other on the cheek. Once Kurt had rounded a corner and found them sitting together with their arms around each other's necks and gently tasting each other's lips. He had smiled, turned around, and left them alone. But Kurt and Amy's relationship was not anything like that. It was more like a big brother little sister kind of thing than anything else. Amy was a balance between the darker Melanie and the light and hilarious Victoria. She also tended to be very calm and logical, which matched him perfectly. They had gotten along very well, when he was teaching her how to drive, designing and building her car (which showed pure genius on her part), and she had recently actually started racing with them and had done well. Her protectiveness had shown back up again when she had promptly rammed a drone car right off the road to save Shirako. Now she was a regular member of the Teku, dressing like them, acting like them but with her own flair. And so seeing her walking around him was common. But when she approached him, he glanced back up.

"What's up?" he asked, turning back to his work. Out of the corner of his eye he could see her half sit, half lean on the hood of a car. But even in that one glance up, his sharp eyes had taken in her body language. She was agitated. No, she was scared. Her muscles were tense, her eyes darting, her hands clenched and unclenched the hood, she kept crossing and uncrossing her legs.

"Kurt…" she took a deep breath. "I have a problem." He grunted and buried himself deeper in the hood. Her telling him about this was common too. He had been her mentor and big brother for a while. Now she had started to gain her independence and mix with the other drivers more. She and Nolo had kind of a little thing going on, to the annoyance of Lani. But Amy wasn't serious about it. Kurt had seen her dabbling among the other guys, sort of playing with them a little. But it was not really that she was singling anybody out, she was just playing with whoever would play with her. She had even had a few exchanges with Dr. Tezla, for crying out loud. Kurt realized she wasn't serious, even if everybody else always tried to make a big deal about it. But Kurt was still her mentor and her source of wisdom, so she would naturally come back to him if she had a problem. And her body language was saying that she had a big problem. She had every sign of a person that had worked up the courage to come tell somebody something. It was also a romantic problem, seeing the way her cheeks were flushed and her hip muscles were tensing and untensing and her legs were moving about restlessly. Even if it wasn't anything sexual the body would still respond like that. But before she went into a long confession spree, he had to make sure of something. She was starting to say something but he stood up, looked her right in the eyes, and stopped her.

"Wait. Before we go any further… are you pregnant?" Her hazel eyes completely blanked out and she stared at him, her mouth a little open. He could see that he had just erased every thought in her mind with that one little phrase. "Sorry, wanted to make sure. Keep talking." He leaned back down and went back to work again. Now she was hesitant.

"Umm…yeah I… uh…" Now Kurt regretted opening his mouth. She had obviously geared up to tell him something, he exploded her mind, and she had completely lost that drive. Now she was too nervous to tell him anything.

"Spit it out," he said calmly, patiently, and soothingly. He didn't want to make her any more nervous than she was, he wanted to relax her. When there was still silence, he said encouragingly, "You know you can tell me anything." She took a deep breath, and plunged into the cold water.

"I'm in love," she blurted. He gave a non-committal grunt, and placed a wrench on the stool beside him and grabbed another one without taking his head out from under the hood. Amy rushed to continue. "And I know what you're thinking, it's just teenager hormones, but I'm serious this time. I've had a lot of crushes before and this is totally different. It's totally different than anything else has ever been…" There was a silence as Kurt contemplated this. He wondered why the heck she had come to him; he was hardly the expert on romance. His track record was Gelorum. But then he realized that she had come to him because she didn't trust anyone else. And he needed to help her because he was her mentor and that was his job. Then he spoke.

"Okay. Now there's three types of love you could be talking about here. First, it could be that you think he's the sexiest thing in the world and you want him to fuck you so bad. That's not love, that's horny. Then, there's the cute, fluffy little flirting 'I'm interested in him' kind of love and that's kiddy or shallow. And then there's the if-I-don't-have-this-person-in-under-a-month-I'm-g onna-die kind of love. Which one do you think you're stuck in?" Amy thought about this.

"Number three," she admitted. He ruminated this for a while. Then a thought came to him.

"Have you talked to him?"

"_Talked_!" Amy's every muscle stiffened and she drew herself up, eyes wide. Kurt thought it funny that the kid that did nothing but talk had not thought of this course of action. "No!" she almost cried in horror. "Do you have any idea!…" Kurt looked at her.

"Why not?" She looked upset now, not meeting his gaze, huffing and looking worried.

"Because… because I don't think he likes me. I really don't." Kurt turned back to his work.

"Find out." From behind him, he heard her say,

"But… I think he only likes the sexy, fuckable girls…" He paused, and wiped his hands with a rag. So there they were. Now they had gotten to the bottom of this. He looked back at her and sat on the edge of his car, ready for a full-blown talk this time.

"And… you're not?" She looked really upset now.

"No. You know I'm not." One of Kurt's eyebrows slowly went up.

"Says who." He could see her tension level building.

"If I am then how come nobody's ever even asked me out! At _all_! Tell me that." She demanded. He gazed calmly at her. He had not known that. No wonder she had played with every guy she got her hands on. She thought none of them would ever respond seriously, and was stuck in the 'can't blame a woman for trying' mindset. This explained a lot of behavior to him. He quietly replied,

"I don't know why. But I will tell you that you are a lot more attractive than you think you are." She was nearing the tension breaking point, he could see. Many times women had so much tension building up about something that they just reached the point where they didn't want to talk about it anymore. And she affirmed this when she said,

"Let's… let's just not talk about this, ok?…" he silently returned to his work. If he went any farther with that thread, she would get mad and blow the whole thing up into a fight, later claiming that he had been insensitive and a jerk. He gave her a few minutes to cool off, which he kept an eye on by occasional glances at her body posture. When her eyes became soft again, he said quietly,

"Actually, if you've never been asked out, it's probably because you've scared a lot of guys off. You have an extremely strong personality. They want some quiet little twit who will cling to their sides and beg them to protect them. You make them afraid of you; make them think that they couldn't handle you. And because your personality is so strong, you can't just wait in the background for some guy to come rescue you, even if that's what you've always wanted inside. You need to go to them and tell them how you feel, because that gives them power and makes them think that just maybe they'd be able to handle you after all. That's really the only advice I can give you. Just go talk to him."

"I already am."

The rag fell from Kurt's fingers as his eyes suddenly defocused, because his mind was exploding. There was a long, throbbing silence. Her voice came, bitter.

"See. I told you he didn't love me." And by the time Kurt could turn around, she was gone.

**So I hit that ending sentence and thought... I really ought to stop there. I really ought to. But if you're just DYING for a true ending, I could add in a short and sweet paragraph that would leave no room for question. Please review and give me lots of comments! (Any and all flames will be used to fry chicken for Pork Chop) Look forward to hearing from you!**


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